The Four Agreements. Don Miguel Ruiz

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What do I love about: The four agreements?

I love how short and straightforward this read was. The 4 agreements are values that are easy to remember and apply in our day to day living.

What do I not love about: The four agreements?

Zilch.

Who should read: The four agreements?

Individuals passionate about personal development.

Who should not read: The four agreements?

If you have no desire to improve who you are and how you relate with others.

Notes from the four agreements

Agreement 1: Be impeccable with your word.

Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

Other notes from agreement 1

Misery likes company
Your opinion comes from your belief, your own ego, and your own dreams

Agreement 2: Don’t take anything personally.

Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dreams. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.

Agreement 3: Don’t make assumptions.

Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

Other notes from agreement 3

We only see what we want to see, and hear what we want to hear. We don’t perceive things the way they are. We have the basis of dreaming with no basis in reality. We literally dream things up in our imaginations. Because we don’t understand something we make an assumption about the meaning, and when the truth comes out, the bubble of our dream pops and we find out it was not what we thought it was at all

Agreement 4: Always do your best.

Your best is going to change from moment to moment. It will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgement, self-abuse and regret.

Other notes from agreement 4

If you abuse yourself very badly, you can even tolerate someone who beats you up, humiliates you, and treats you like dirt
If you do your best always, over and over again, you will become a master of transformation. Practice makes the master

Other points I liked from the four agreements.

The Toltec knowledge arises from the same essential unity of truth as all the sacred esoteric traditions found around the world. Though it is not a religion, it honors all the spiritual masters who have taught on the earth. While it does embrace spirit, it is most accurately described as a way of life, distinguished by the ready accessibility of happiness and love

It is not the stars that create light, but rather light that creates the stars. “Everything is made of light”
Everything in existence is a manifestation of the one living being we call GOD.
The real us is pure love, pure light.
The outside dream uses mom, dad, the schools, and religion to teach us how to dream. The adults around us hooked our attention and put information into our minds through repetition. That is the way we learned everything we know
It was not your choice to speak English. You did not choose your religion or your moral values – they were already there before you were born. We never had the opportunity to choose what to believe or what not to believe
The fear of being rejected becomes the fear of not being good enough. We become a copy of mamma’s belief, daddy’s belief, society’s beliefs and religion’s beliefs
Breaking the rules in the Book of Law opens your emotional wounds, and your reaction is to create emotional poison
We keep searching and searching when everything is already within us. There is no truth to find
Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive
The reward is to transcend the human experience of suffering, to become the embodiment of God
We can reach heaven while we are alive; we don’t have to wait until we die
If we can see our state of mind as a disease, we find there is a cure. How do we do this? We must forgive those we feel have wronged us, not because they deserve to be forgiven, but because we love ourselves so much we don’t want to keep paying for the injustice. Forgiveness is the only way to heal
The final way to attain personal freedom is to prepare ourselves for the initiation of the dead, to take death itself as our teacher. What the angel of death can teach us is how to be truly alive. We become aware that we can die at any moment; we have just the present to be alive. The truth is that we don’t know if we are going to die tomorrow. Who knows?
The world is very beautiful and very wonderful. Life can be very easy when love is your way of life

Three Masteries that lead people to become Toltecs:

Mastery of Awareness; Aware of who we really are, with all the possibilities
Mastery of Transformation; how to change and be free of domestication
Mastery of Intent